


Miss Gradenko

by alcibiades



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Original Character Death(s), Pre-Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-01
Updated: 2014-11-01
Packaged: 2018-02-23 11:17:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2545586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alcibiades/pseuds/alcibiades
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I thought you would be older," she said. "From your correspondences. I didn't imagine a young man." She smiled slightly, but the smile did not reach her eyes. "You didn't seem to have the recklessness to be young, but I suppose in a way it's very American that you are."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Miss Gradenko

**Author's Note:**

> Title, of course, from [the Police song](http://youtu.be/YyZVS_b6r4E) of the same name.

It was cold and getting colder outside, with a light persistent drizzle that promised to turn to ice at night. He crossed the busy street and walked past the valets unloading passengers, up the steps into the hotel.

He approached the front desk, where a woman sat neatly-dressed and smiling. "Good afternoon, sir," she said. "How may I help you?"

"Checking in," he said, leaning against the counter. "I have a reservation."

"Excellent," she replied, typing and looking at her computer screen. "May I get your name, please?"

"Yakov Alexandrov," he said, and she glanced at him as she typed.

"You're Russian?" she asked.

"American," he explained. "My family -- immigrants."

"I see," she said, and stopped typing, and smiled at him. "I have your reservation right here, Mr. Alexandrov. I'll just print out a few documents for you to sign; it looks like everything has been taken care of by your company."

He nodded, removing the glove from his right hand and taking the pen that she offered him. "Sign here, please," she said, indicating a line, another line on the next page, and so he did.

"Here is your room key," she said. "You'll find your room on the fourth floor, southwest corner of the building. Please don't hesitate to call us at reception if you need anything else." She smiled, handing him the key card. "Enjoy your stay at the Millennium."

"Thank you," he said, putting his glove and the key card into the pocket of his coat. He nodded, and smiled back a little, going to the elevator.

It was an expensive hotel. The room had big windows, which he drew the shades on, a plush bed with a lot of pillows. He didn't know if he'd be able to sleep in the bed, which seemed very soft, with too much give, when he sat down on it. Certainly not with all the pillows.

With the shades drawn, the room became quite dim. He sat on the bed for a little while and then he stood up, taking his heavy overcoat off and hanging it up in the closet by the door, undoing the laces of his shoes and putting them on the floor of the closet, beneath the coat. The gun he took from its holster under his right arm; it was there, he knew, as a contingency plan only. He was not meant to have to use it. The gun he put in the drawer of one of the bedside tables, atop the pamphlets about local attractions and restaurants.

He looked down at his bare feet and then settled back down on the bed, hands in his lap, to wait for nightfall.

++

When it was evening, he put his shoes on and went back downstairs. It was a weeknight and early besides, but he found that the bar had a number of people in it already. His contact was not among them, however, and so he took up a seat at the bar and ordered a glass of vodka which he did not drink and a glass of water which he did.

He spotted the young woman immediately, when she came in; she had a look of nervousness about her, a sort of furtiveness to her glances and movements. Besides this, she had very long, straight blonde hair, which stood out like a banner in the low light of the bar. She sat down at a corner table, putting a menu up so that her face could not really be seen. When the waiter came by, she ordered a glass of wine.

He watched her for a little while - her, and the other patrons of the bar. He had had a haircut recently and was pleased to see that the style of it fit in well with the other men here. It was virtually indistinguishable, in fact.

After she had finished her first glass of wine, he got up and went slowly over toward her table. She saw him coming and he could see her go very tense - she probably had a weapon on her; that would be the sensible thing.

He held up a hand to forestall any thoughts of violence she might have. "We've spoken before," he said, sliding into the seat opposite hers.

She lowered the menu and looked at him. "You're the American?" she asked. She herself had a crisp British accent, marred by only the slightest hint of Russia. "I'll need to see your identification."

"Of course," he said. Of course he had these things. He reached into the breast pocket of his jacket and took out the little packet, passed it across the table to her, two fingers on it, which he removed only when she picked it up.

She studied it for several minutes, and handed it back over when she was finally satisfied. He put it back into his pocket. "Yakov," she said.

"Yes," he replied, and then, "I speak Russian, too, if you'd rather."

She shook her head, running a hand through her curtain of hair. "I'd rather not be here talking at all," she said. "I'd rather be extracted immediately." She stopped, picking up the wine glass and, with a circle of her wrist, swirling the remainders of it in the bottom. "I assume you've seen the file."

"Yes," he replied.

"I thought they would have sent more than one agent," she said, looking at the wine glass still.

"You're quite safe with me," he answered, and she glanced back at him again, skeptical. "You know these things are complicated," he continued. "With the kind of information that you're offering, of course extracting you safely is a priority for my agency. But you know how slowly the wheels of bureaucracy turn."

She ran a hand through her hair again, ducking her head. She was very young, he thought. "These people don't operate by bureaucracy, Agent Alexandrov," she said. "That's the problem. While I'm here waiting for your government to decide whether or not I'm worth the risk, I'm _at_ risk."

"That's why they sent me," he said, flagging down the waiter and ordering another glass of wine for the woman. He sipped at his own glass of vodka. It was bitter.

He lowered his voice. "You know," he said. "My parents left Russia. But it never really stops following you, does it?" He paused, and then, carefully, "I do think it's brave, what you're doing."

She laughed, her fingers over her eyes. Long, thin fingers. "Brave," she agreed, "or foolish."

"Rarely one without the other," he said, and smiled when she looked up at him.

"I thought you would be older," she said. "From your correspondences. I didn't imagine a young man." She smiled slightly, but the smile did not reach her eyes. "You didn't seem to have the recklessness to be young, but I suppose in a way it's very American that you are."

He didn't know what to respond to that, so he stayed quiet, and she finished the second glass of wine very quickly. "I won't give you the full version of the file until I have assurances," she said, spitting the words out rapid-fire. "You can pass that along to your bureaucratic machine."

She got up and left after that, retreating stiff-backed across the lobby to the elevator bank. He stayed, finished his glass of vodka and paid the bill. Then he went up to his room as well.

++

He waited for her in the hotel cafe the next morning with a cup of tea and two slices of toast in front of himself, but she did not come. She did not come down until late afternoon, and she had the same look of intense nervousness. She came toward him when she saw him sitting there, though, and sat down across from him. Her pale face with its dark eyes was so serious.

"Have you heard anything," she said to him. She ordered a vodka instead of wine, and when it came, sat with her fingers curled around it for a few minutes before downing most of it in one go. Her face twisted; she must have found it bitter, too.

He had not heard anything, so he shook his head, and she laughed, putting her hand to her forehead. "They're waiting for me," she said. "Of course. To make my play."

She finished the glass of vodka. "I won't give you the file," she said. "I won't, do you understand?" She laughed again, a little wildly, he thought. "Not until I am promised asylum. And the information I have is -- I think they're not taking me very seriously, but this is a very serious issue."

He looked at her, not sure what to say. For him to be here, it must be a serious issue. "I had no intentions of betraying my country," she continued. "I'm not simply some whistleblower selling out state secrets. What I found -- the government has done terrible things, reprehensible things, certainly, but not _these things._ Surely you understand the implications of this file."

"You should eat something," he said. He had eaten the toast a while ago, but he was sure the waiter would bring them more, except that she just shook her head.

"I'm not hungry," she said. "I don't know if I'll ever be hungry again." She looked down into the empty vodka glass, her fingers circled around it. The waiter came by; she asked for another drink.

There was a long silence. She drank the second drink more slowly, but did not seem to want to speak. Her eyebrows drew together and she let her long hair fall partially across her face. He observed her, in detail. Her stylish blouse was slightly discolored around the collar and the sleeve cuffs. The roots of her hair were growing in a few shades darker.

"I don't want to die," she said finally. "But I think it might be worse to live knowing about what I found and not having done anything about it." She looked up at him. "Do you know what that's like? To be caught between doing the right thing and putting yourself in certain danger?"

He thought for a moment that he did, but she didn't seem to want an answer to the question, not really. She was asking it just to say it aloud, perhaps. People often did this. He reached across the table and touched the back of her hand. She looked at him, startled.

When the waiter came by, she ordered a third drink. "I never wanted to go into government," she said, her hair hanging down. "It only turned out that I was good at it." She tilted her chin up, shook her hair back out of her face. "What do you think I'll do in America?"

He had no idea; he wasn't prepared to answer that question. "Whatever you want to do," he said, and then tacked on, an afterthought, "I suppose."

She laughed - and this time it was not as wild, but it seemed much sadder, the laugh. "I suppose your government will be happy to have me," she said. "Like you wrote before."

"Yes," he said.

Her hands were shaking slightly when she lifted the third glass of vodka to finish it. "Will you come back with me to my room," she said.

He looked at her.

"The file is in my room," she said.

She looked at him, and then away again. He touched the top of her hand once more, and she put the glass down, hard. "Yes, I'll come back with you," he said.

"Tell me first," she said. "Tell me what you said in the message, what you called me, so that I know it's really you."

"Catbird," he answered without hesitation. She took a deep breath, and stood up, smoothing her skirt down and heading for the elevators, slow enough that he knew he was meant to follow her.

Her room was also on the fourth floor, though closer to the elevator. When she opened the door, he could see the evidence immediately that she had been here for some time - her things were spread out around the room, cosmetics and jewelry on the bathroom counter. "Should I take my shoes off?" he asked her.

"Oh --" she said, looking around herself, "I don't know, I --"

She went to the desk and began to sort through papers, and he took his shoes off and put them by the door, unbuttoning his jacket. She turned toward him when he approached, holding out to him a small, nondescript drive. Her face had a strange expression; perhaps, he thought, she might be about to cry. "I've lost my mind, haven't I?" she asked.

He didn't hold his hand out; he waited for her to offer the drive to him. She took his hand and put the drive into it, and a tear did fall, sliding down her cheek, off the sharp point of her chin. She closed his fingers around it, and only then did he take it and put it into the inner pocket of his jacket.

She touched his face. "I have," she said. "I've lost my mind. How could I think I'd ever be safe again?"

"You're quite safe with me," he said, repeating what he'd said from the day before.

"I didn't expect --" she said, and then she leaned in and pressed her mouth against his; she was trembling and her cheeks were wet. She pulled away again after only a few seconds, looking down and away from him. Her pale face became pink with a flush.

He knew what it was that she wanted, so he leaned forward and touched his mouth to hers again. She put her arms around him and kicked off her own shoes, guiding him with the pressure of her body back toward the big soft bed with its too-many pillows.

He sat down on the bed and she went with him, her knees on either side of his thighs. She pushed the jacket from his shoulders and started to undo the neat knot of his tie. He touched the small of her back with one hand, the thin, fragile line of her long neck with the other. Her hair, where it brushed his arm, was very soft.

She started to unbutton his shirt. Abruptly she pulled away, though with his arm around her she could not get far. He looked at her face; she was staring, with horror, at the place where his left arm joined to his body.

"You," she said. " _You._ "

A sob came out of her mouth, then, and it was the last noise that she would make; she did not make much of an effort to pull away, and his strength being greatly superior, it was easy for him to get his hand over her nose and mouth. He turned her so that she was beneath him, and put his knee on her chest.

Her hands clawed at his wrist ineffectually, her fingernails scraping against the metal and the leather of the glove he wore. Her eyes stared up at him, dark irises with the whites showing all around them, but after a few moments he found no reason to look there any longer, and instead focused on the blank wall behind the bed.

She stopped struggling before very long at all, and after about six minutes, he removed his hand from her face and his knee from her chest. He touched her neck and wrist, where there was no pulse, and then shifted to the side. He picked up the phone from the bedside table and dialed down to the concierge.

"Yes," he said. "I'm in room four-thirteen. If you could send someone up from housekeeping, I've got some linens I'd like taken away."

While he waited, he put his tie, jacket, and shoes back on and packed up all the papers on the desk into a folder, which he tucked under his arm.

A knock came at the door, and he went and opened it, positioning himself so that whoever it was would not be able to see into the room immediately, although all they would see if they were to peer inside was a young woman, asleep on a messy bed.

The young man waiting outside gave him a canny look, tugging along a laundry basket behind himself. He was wearing the uniform of a hotel worker, but the set of his shoulders and the way that he moved made it apparent that he had considerable combat experience.

He stepped aside and pulled the door open. "Get her off the bed for me, would you?" said the young man, so he did. She was very light, and went into the laundry basket without any resistance at all.

"Your extraction team will be waiting for you at the service entrance," said the hotel worker who was not a hotel worker. "Clean it up and be there in an hour."

He nodded once and the young man went out, whistling a tune as he pushed the laundry basket along the hall toward the cargo elevator. The woman hadn't been staying here under her real name; all that was left to do was retrieve the coat and the gun and check out.

He went back to his room. Those things were where he had left them. He put the gun back into its holster under his right arm, slipped his coat on, and went to the elevator.

"I hope you've enjoyed your stay with us, Mr. Alexandrov," said the woman at the front desk. The same woman who had checked him in. She smiled. "Please think of us in the future if your travel plans bring you through London again."

"Thank you," he said, passing the room key back across to her. He put his hands into his pockets and went into the dining room, and then the kitchen. None of the staff paid him any attention, as he walked.

When he pushed the service door open, it was cold outside, snow on the ground, and an unmarked black van was waiting for him. He tapped four times on the door, and climbed inside when it slid open, offering his hands, the folder in his right, wrists in front of him. They took the folder and put the cuffs on him.

It was quite dark in the van.

As the wheels began to move, someone came forward and rooted around in his jacket for a moment, finding the small portable storage drive the woman had given him. His eyes had adjusted to the dim light and he could see the man take it and look at it for a few seconds.

"Mission report," said the man's voice.

"Target eliminated," he answered, settling down with his hands in his lap. "Information acquired. No witnesses. No collateral damage."

There was silence, and then the sound of a crunch: the drive falling to the floor, being crushed under the heel of a boot.


End file.
